REJAUL KARIM BYRON

The top 20 loan defaulters account for 63 percent of the defaulted loans in six state-owned banks, prompting the government to order specific roadmaps for recovery.

At the end of last year, the top 20 defaulters owed Tk 92,627 crore, according to the minutes of a finance ministry review meeting held last month.

The state banks could recover only Tk 562 crore from the defaulters. Rupali recovered Tk 361 crore, followed by Janata (Tk 56 crore), Agrani (Tk 31 crore), Sonali (Tk 9 crore), Bangladesh Development Bank (Tk 7 crore) and BASIC (Tk 5 crore).

Nazma Mobarek, secretary of the Financial Institutions Division, who chaired the review meeting, termed the recovery situation “highly disappointing”, The Daily Star has learnt from people involved with the proceedings.

She directed the banks’ chief executives to formulate a realistic recovery action plan.

A steel company cleared Tk 242 crore to exit Rupali Bank, or else the bank’s recovery figure would have been much less, said one of its top officials on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly on the issue.

The majority of the defaulted loans are from the Awami League times and most of the defaulters have fled the country with the ouster of the Sheikh Hasina-led government.

“How can we recover such sums from them when they are not in the country?”

And those who are still in the country made down payments to avail themselves of the central bank’s special loan rescheduling facility, he said.

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